via CNET News.com: "The next version of the General Public License may tackle the issue of Web companies that use free software in commercial Web-based applications but don't distribute the source code.
At present, companies that distribute GPL-licensed software must make the source code publicly available, including any modifications they've made. Though the rule covers many businesses that use GPL-licensed software for commercial ends, it doesn't cover Web companies that use such software to offer their services through the Web, as they're not actually distributing the software.
GPL 3, the next version of the free software license, a draft of which is expected to be released in early 2006, may close this loophole, GPL author and Free Software Foundation head Richard Stallman said in an interview with publisher O'Reilly Media."
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Monday, September 26, 2005
Hard Bigotry of No Expectations
Editorial via New York Times: "Four years after 9/11, Katrina showed the world that performance standards for the Department of Homeland Security were so low that it was not required to create real plans to respond to real disasters. Only a president with no expectation that the federal government should step up after a crisis could have stripped the Federal Emergency Management Agency bare, appointed as its director a political crony who could not even adequately represent the breeders of Arabian horses, and announced that the director was doing a splendid job while bodies floated in the floodwaters.
Only a president who does not expect the government to help provide decent housing for the truly needy in normal times could leave seven of the top jobs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development vacant and then, after disaster struck, offer small-bore solutions to enormous problems. Substandard wages, an easing of affirmative action regulation and a housing lottery that will help a tiny sliver of people apparently are considered good enough for poor families along the Gulf Coast left homeless by Katrina.
In Iraq, the elimination of expectations is on display in the disastrous political process. Among other things, the constitution drafted under American supervision does not provide for the rights of women and minorities and enshrines one religion as the fundamental source of law. Administration officials excuse this poor excuse for a constitution by saying it also refers to democratic values. But it makes them secondary to Islamic law and never actually defines them. Our founding fathers had higher expectations: they made the split of church and state fundamental, and spelled out what they meant by democracy and the rule of law.
It's true that the United States Constitution once allowed slavery, denied women the right to vote and granted property rights only to "
Only a president who does not expect the government to help provide decent housing for the truly needy in normal times could leave seven of the top jobs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development vacant and then, after disaster struck, offer small-bore solutions to enormous problems. Substandard wages, an easing of affirmative action regulation and a housing lottery that will help a tiny sliver of people apparently are considered good enough for poor families along the Gulf Coast left homeless by Katrina.
In Iraq, the elimination of expectations is on display in the disastrous political process. Among other things, the constitution drafted under American supervision does not provide for the rights of women and minorities and enshrines one religion as the fundamental source of law. Administration officials excuse this poor excuse for a constitution by saying it also refers to democratic values. But it makes them secondary to Islamic law and never actually defines them. Our founding fathers had higher expectations: they made the split of church and state fundamental, and spelled out what they meant by democracy and the rule of law.
It's true that the United States Constitution once allowed slavery, denied women the right to vote and granted property rights only to "
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Senator John Kerry's Speech at Brown University
via JohnKerry.com: "[T]here's every reason to believe the President finally acted on Katrina and admitted a mistake only because he was held accountable by the press, cornered by events, and compelled by the outrage of the American people, who with their own eyes could see a failure of leadership and its consequences.
Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job -- to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a 'blame game' -- but as I’ve said - this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.
This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power.
* * *
And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn’t mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they’re designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments. They’re already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries - and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!
The administration is recycling all their failed policies and shipping them to Louisiana. After four years of ideological excess, these Washington Republicans have a bad hangover -- and they can't think of anything to offer the Gulf Coast but the hair of the dog that bit them.
* * *
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.
This is the Katrina administration.
Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job -- to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a 'blame game' -- but as I’ve said - this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.
This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power.
* * *
And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn’t mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they’re designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments. They’re already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries - and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!
The administration is recycling all their failed policies and shipping them to Louisiana. After four years of ideological excess, these Washington Republicans have a bad hangover -- and they can't think of anything to offer the Gulf Coast but the hair of the dog that bit them.
* * *
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.
This is the Katrina administration.
Paying For Katrina
via the War Room at Salon.com: "The Bush administration insists that the federal government can spend something like $200 billion on rebuilding the Gulf Coast while taking care of all of the government's other 'priorities,' retaining all of the president's tax cuts and still fulfilling the president's promise to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009.
It's a neat trick if you can pull it off. But if anybody needs a hint about just how hard it will be, the Army's budget for Iraq would be a good place to look. As the Wall Street Journal reports today, the Army's costs for Iraq are far exceeding estimates the Pentagon made just a few months ago, when Congress approved a supplemental spending bill for the war. Indeed, the Army is so close to running out of money for prosecuting the war now that it will have to borrow funds from other places before the end of the fiscal year. Where would the Army get the cash it needs? Until more politically sensitive heads prevailed, the Army planned to borrow from a fund that is supposed to be used to install armor on vehicles troops are using in Iraq.
Now the Pentagon says the Army will borrow the money from accounts that aren't so politically charged. But the larger point is this: If the Army is so strapped that it would actually consider borrowing $153 million -- the federal government equivalent of loose change under the sofa cushions -- from funds used to protect troops, where is the federal government going to come up with $200 b-b-b-billion to pay for the Katrina work?"
It's a neat trick if you can pull it off. But if anybody needs a hint about just how hard it will be, the Army's budget for Iraq would be a good place to look. As the Wall Street Journal reports today, the Army's costs for Iraq are far exceeding estimates the Pentagon made just a few months ago, when Congress approved a supplemental spending bill for the war. Indeed, the Army is so close to running out of money for prosecuting the war now that it will have to borrow funds from other places before the end of the fiscal year. Where would the Army get the cash it needs? Until more politically sensitive heads prevailed, the Army planned to borrow from a fund that is supposed to be used to install armor on vehicles troops are using in Iraq.
Now the Pentagon says the Army will borrow the money from accounts that aren't so politically charged. But the larger point is this: If the Army is so strapped that it would actually consider borrowing $153 million -- the federal government equivalent of loose change under the sofa cushions -- from funds used to protect troops, where is the federal government going to come up with $200 b-b-b-billion to pay for the Katrina work?"
Monday, September 19, 2005
FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort
via New York Times: "BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 16 - Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina cut its devastating path, FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say. The federal aid hot line mentioned by President Bush in his address to the nation on Thursday cannot handle the flood of calls, leaving thousands of people unable to get through for help, day after day."
Thursday, September 15, 2005
In Roberts Hearing, Specter Assails Court
Roberts declines to comment on Rehnquist the activist jurist via New York Times: "Senator Specter took particular exception to the court's conclusion in several of the cases that Congress had not compiled an adequate record showing the existence of the problems the statutes sought to solve.
He said that leading up to the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, for example, 'there were reports on gender bias from the task forces in 21 states, and eight separate reports issued by Congress and its committees over a long period.'
In United States v. Morrison, the court's decision in 2000 that overturned the private-lawsuit portion of the statute, Chief Justice Rehnquist said that 'Congress's findings were weakened by the fact that they rely so heavily on a method of reasoning that we have already rejected,' namely that various instances of violence against women could be added together to demonstrate an impact on the nation's economy sufficient to bring the subject within Congress's authority over interstate commerce.
Turning to Judge Roberts, nominated to succeed the late chief justice, Senator Specter said, 'Do we have your commitment that you won't characterize your 'method of reasoning' as superior to ours?' The nominee demurred and, in fact, was so cautiously nonresponsive as to leave the senator to continue with what amounted to a monologue.
* * *
Senator Specter's reference was to a dissenting opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia in a decision last year, Tennessee v. Lane, which permitted states to be sued under the Americans With Disabilities Act for failing to provide accessible courtrooms. On the surface, at least, the decision conflicted with a 2001 ruling, Board of Trustees v. Garrett, which gave states immunity from lawsuits by their employees under the same law.
Justice Scalia, who had joined the majority in the 2001 case, said the conflicting results showed the "judicial arbitrariness" of the court's approach. "It casts this court in the role of Congress's taskmaster," he said.
Justice Scalia objected to the requirement the court has placed on Congress to show that its legislative approaches are "congruent" with, and "proportionate" to, the problem it is seeking to address.
Mr. Specter asked Judge Roberts: "Isn't this 'congruence and proportionality' test, which comes out of thin air, a classic example of judicial activism? Isn't that the very essence of what is in the eye of the beholder, where the court takes carte blanche to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional?"
Judge Roberts started to reply that in its two most recent cases in this series, the Lane case from Tennessee and another case, Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the court had shifted gears and rejected constitutional challenges to the laws in question. The Hibbs case, from 2003, allowed suits against states under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
But no sooner had Judge Roberts started to explain "Lane and Hibbs," than Senator Specter cut him off: "But Judge Roberts, they uphold it at the pleasure of the court. Congress can't figure that out. There's no way we can tell what's congruent and proportional in the eyes of the court."
He said that leading up to the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, for example, 'there were reports on gender bias from the task forces in 21 states, and eight separate reports issued by Congress and its committees over a long period.'
In United States v. Morrison, the court's decision in 2000 that overturned the private-lawsuit portion of the statute, Chief Justice Rehnquist said that 'Congress's findings were weakened by the fact that they rely so heavily on a method of reasoning that we have already rejected,' namely that various instances of violence against women could be added together to demonstrate an impact on the nation's economy sufficient to bring the subject within Congress's authority over interstate commerce.
Turning to Judge Roberts, nominated to succeed the late chief justice, Senator Specter said, 'Do we have your commitment that you won't characterize your 'method of reasoning' as superior to ours?' The nominee demurred and, in fact, was so cautiously nonresponsive as to leave the senator to continue with what amounted to a monologue.
* * *
Senator Specter's reference was to a dissenting opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia in a decision last year, Tennessee v. Lane, which permitted states to be sued under the Americans With Disabilities Act for failing to provide accessible courtrooms. On the surface, at least, the decision conflicted with a 2001 ruling, Board of Trustees v. Garrett, which gave states immunity from lawsuits by their employees under the same law.
Justice Scalia, who had joined the majority in the 2001 case, said the conflicting results showed the "judicial arbitrariness" of the court's approach. "It casts this court in the role of Congress's taskmaster," he said.
Justice Scalia objected to the requirement the court has placed on Congress to show that its legislative approaches are "congruent" with, and "proportionate" to, the problem it is seeking to address.
Mr. Specter asked Judge Roberts: "Isn't this 'congruence and proportionality' test, which comes out of thin air, a classic example of judicial activism? Isn't that the very essence of what is in the eye of the beholder, where the court takes carte blanche to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional?"
Judge Roberts started to reply that in its two most recent cases in this series, the Lane case from Tennessee and another case, Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the court had shifted gears and rejected constitutional challenges to the laws in question. The Hibbs case, from 2003, allowed suits against states under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
But no sooner had Judge Roberts started to explain "Lane and Hibbs," than Senator Specter cut him off: "But Judge Roberts, they uphold it at the pleasure of the court. Congress can't figure that out. There's no way we can tell what's congruent and proportional in the eyes of the court."
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Power For Colonial Pipeline Co., Not For Hospitals
via Hattiesburg American: "Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.
* * *
"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association - which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.
"I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority," Compton said. "Our people were told to work until it was done.
* * *
Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney's office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately.
Jordan dated the first call the night of Aug. 30 and the second call the morning of Aug. 31. Southern Pines supplies electricity to the substation that powers the Colonial pipeline.
Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike Callahan said the U.S. Department of Energy called him on Aug. 31. Callahan said department officials said opening the fuel line was a national priority.
* * *
Compton said workers who were trying to restore substations that power two rural hospitals - Stone County Hospital in Wiggins and George County Hospital in Lucedale - worked instead on the Colonial Pipeline project.
The move caused power to be restored at least 24 hours later than planned.
* * *
"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association - which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.
"I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority," Compton said. "Our people were told to work until it was done.
* * *
Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney's office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately.
Jordan dated the first call the night of Aug. 30 and the second call the morning of Aug. 31. Southern Pines supplies electricity to the substation that powers the Colonial pipeline.
Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike Callahan said the U.S. Department of Energy called him on Aug. 31. Callahan said department officials said opening the fuel line was a national priority.
* * *
Compton said workers who were trying to restore substations that power two rural hospitals - Stone County Hospital in Wiggins and George County Hospital in Lucedale - worked instead on the Colonial Pipeline project.
The move caused power to be restored at least 24 hours later than planned.
Gulfport Status
via steve gilliard blog: "We never found a resident who had ever seen even one FEMA official. No one had been able to successfully complete "Registration Intake" via the toll-free number. Most people we met still didn't have electricity or phone service. We finally heard of one man who got through to FEMA -- at 2:30 a.m. But when asked for insurance information he didn't have and didn't know how he could get since he'd lost everything and had no place else to turn, he just broke down and cried. The bureaucracy was killing him.
It's no wonder. The Sept. 11 Clarion-Ledger, Jackson's local paper, reported that U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering (R) had said FEMA needs 10,000 operators to properly staff the phones, but Homeland Security regulations require employees to pass security clearance, typically a months-long process. The paper quotes Pickering as concluding, "In other words, the phone line is useless."
It's no wonder. The Sept. 11 Clarion-Ledger, Jackson's local paper, reported that U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering (R) had said FEMA needs 10,000 operators to properly staff the phones, but Homeland Security regulations require employees to pass security clearance, typically a months-long process. The paper quotes Pickering as concluding, "In other words, the phone line is useless."
How Bush Blew It
Evan Thomas via MSNBC.com: "How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less 'situational awareness,' as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.
President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.
But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.
* * *
Bad news rarely flows up in bureaucracies. For most of those first few days, Bush was hearing what a good job the Feds were doing. Bush likes "metrics," numbers to measure performance, so the bureaucrats gave him reassuring statistics. At a press availability on Wednesday, Bush duly rattled them off: there were 400 trucks transporting 5.4 million meals and 13.4 million liters of water along with 3.4 million pounds of ice. Yet it was obvious to anyone watching TV that New Orleans had turned into a Third World hellhole.
The denial and the frustration finally collided aboard Air Force One on Friday. As the president's plane sat on the tarmac at New Orleans airport, a confrontation occurred that was described by one participant as "as blunt as you can get without the Secret Service getting involved." Governor Blanco was there, along with various congressmen and senators and Mayor Nagin (who took advantage of the opportunity to take a shower aboard the plane). One by one, the lawmakers listed their grievances as Bush listened. Rep. Bobby Jindal, whose district encompasses New Orleans, told of a sheriff who had called FEMA for assistance. According to Jindal, the sheriff was told to e-mail his request, "and the guy was sitting in a district underwater and with no electricity," Jindal said, incredulously. "How does that make any sense?" Jindal later told NEWSWEEK that "almost everybody" around the conference table had a similar story about how the federal response "just wasn't working." With each tale, "the president just shook his head, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing," says Jindal, a conservative Republican and Bush appointee who lost a close race to Blanco. Repeatedly, the president turned to his aides and said, "Fix it."
* * *
Late last week, Bush was, by some accounts, down and angry. But another Bush aide described the atmosphere inside the White House as "strangely surreal and almost detached." At one meeting described by this insider, officials were oddly self-congratulatory, perhaps in an effort to buck each other up. Life inside a bunker can be strange, especially in defeat.
President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.
But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.
* * *
Bad news rarely flows up in bureaucracies. For most of those first few days, Bush was hearing what a good job the Feds were doing. Bush likes "metrics," numbers to measure performance, so the bureaucrats gave him reassuring statistics. At a press availability on Wednesday, Bush duly rattled them off: there were 400 trucks transporting 5.4 million meals and 13.4 million liters of water along with 3.4 million pounds of ice. Yet it was obvious to anyone watching TV that New Orleans had turned into a Third World hellhole.
The denial and the frustration finally collided aboard Air Force One on Friday. As the president's plane sat on the tarmac at New Orleans airport, a confrontation occurred that was described by one participant as "as blunt as you can get without the Secret Service getting involved." Governor Blanco was there, along with various congressmen and senators and Mayor Nagin (who took advantage of the opportunity to take a shower aboard the plane). One by one, the lawmakers listed their grievances as Bush listened. Rep. Bobby Jindal, whose district encompasses New Orleans, told of a sheriff who had called FEMA for assistance. According to Jindal, the sheriff was told to e-mail his request, "and the guy was sitting in a district underwater and with no electricity," Jindal said, incredulously. "How does that make any sense?" Jindal later told NEWSWEEK that "almost everybody" around the conference table had a similar story about how the federal response "just wasn't working." With each tale, "the president just shook his head, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing," says Jindal, a conservative Republican and Bush appointee who lost a close race to Blanco. Repeatedly, the president turned to his aides and said, "Fix it."
* * *
Late last week, Bush was, by some accounts, down and angry. But another Bush aide described the atmosphere inside the White House as "strangely surreal and almost detached." At one meeting described by this insider, officials were oddly self-congratulatory, perhaps in an effort to buck each other up. Life inside a bunker can be strange, especially in defeat.
A Fatal Incuriosity
Dowd via NYT: "How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?
Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal.
Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.
Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.
The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be 'cold and snappish in private.' Mike Allen wrote in Time about one 'youngish aide' who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he 'had dry heaves' afterward."
Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal.
Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.
Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.
The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be 'cold and snappish in private.' Mike Allen wrote in Time about one 'youngish aide' who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he 'had dry heaves' afterward."
Singapore and Katrina
Friedman via NYT: "Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: 'We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?'
Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. 'Today's conservatives,' he wrote, 'differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.
'The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up.'"
Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. 'Today's conservatives,' he wrote, 'differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.
'The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up.'"
Politicos call for music copyright reform
via CNET News.com: "WASHINGTON--Legal music-download services won't be able to compete fully with their free- and illegal-download counterparts until copyright law changes, a Virginia congressman said Tuesday.
'The illegal services offer all of the songs, and the legal services don't, and therein lies the crux of the problem,' Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said in a speech at the Future of Music Policy Summit here.
The remedy, he said, lies in a congressional rewrite of portions of copyright law that govern licensing and royalty fees and make it cumbersome for legal download services to add material to their inventories. Boucher said he hopes his committee will have a new bill written and reported to the U.S. House of Representatives by the end of this congressional term in November. (The congressman has also been a vocal critic of other pieces of digital copyright law.)
The Senate Judiciary Committee has also been exploring how to streamline and simplify the royalty system in a way that 'balances the competing interests of artists and publishers' but 'doesn't continue to lead to legal challenges,' Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told summit attendees in a noon speech.
Any changes to copyright law must be 'technology neutral,' she emphasized. 'The government needs to have a light touch,' she said, so as 'not to unintentionally slow down the process of innovation.'"
'The illegal services offer all of the songs, and the legal services don't, and therein lies the crux of the problem,' Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said in a speech at the Future of Music Policy Summit here.
The remedy, he said, lies in a congressional rewrite of portions of copyright law that govern licensing and royalty fees and make it cumbersome for legal download services to add material to their inventories. Boucher said he hopes his committee will have a new bill written and reported to the U.S. House of Representatives by the end of this congressional term in November. (The congressman has also been a vocal critic of other pieces of digital copyright law.)
The Senate Judiciary Committee has also been exploring how to streamline and simplify the royalty system in a way that 'balances the competing interests of artists and publishers' but 'doesn't continue to lead to legal challenges,' Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told summit attendees in a noon speech.
Any changes to copyright law must be 'technology neutral,' she emphasized. 'The government needs to have a light touch,' she said, so as 'not to unintentionally slow down the process of innovation.'"
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
End of the Bush Era
EJ Dionne via washpost.com: "If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.
He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.
And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina."
He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.
And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina."
Feds Plan Patent Reform
via CNET News.com: "When Gordon Gould was a graduate student at Columbia University in 1957, he sketched out the concept of a concentrated beam of light amplified in a gas-filled chamber and coined the term 'laser' to describe it.
But Gould waited to seek a patent on his discovery, believing incorrectly that a working prototype was necessary. Eventually, two other researchers were awarded the basic patents instead.
After a decades-long legal tussle, Gould finally reveled in victory when a federal court ruled that the patent application it had approved did not anticipate the common uses of lasers. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office then granted Gould lucrative rights to the invention, in part because as a graduate student he had his original research notebooks date-stamped and notarized.
The legal standard that was applied awards patents to the person who invented a concept first, and it has long been a unique feature of the U.S. patent system. This year, however, Congress is about to consider a controversial proposal from Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, that would grant a patent to the first person to submit the paperwork
--a standard that's common outside the United States."
But Gould waited to seek a patent on his discovery, believing incorrectly that a working prototype was necessary. Eventually, two other researchers were awarded the basic patents instead.
After a decades-long legal tussle, Gould finally reveled in victory when a federal court ruled that the patent application it had approved did not anticipate the common uses of lasers. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office then granted Gould lucrative rights to the invention, in part because as a graduate student he had his original research notebooks date-stamped and notarized.
The legal standard that was applied awards patents to the person who invented a concept first, and it has long been a unique feature of the U.S. patent system. This year, however, Congress is about to consider a controversial proposal from Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, that would grant a patent to the first person to submit the paperwork
--a standard that's common outside the United States."
Friday, September 09, 2005
Krugman: Point Those Fingers
via NYT: "It might make sense to hold off on the criticism if this were the first big disaster on Mr. Bush's watch, or if the chain of mistakes in handling Hurricane Katrina were out of character. But even with the most generous possible assessment, this is the administration's second big policy disaster, after Iraq. And the chain of mistakes was perfectly in character - there are striking parallels between the errors the administration made in Iraq and the errors it made last week.
In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.
The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.
In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development.
The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a 'turkey farm,' a source of patronage jobs.
As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's 'upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management"
In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.
The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.
In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development.
The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a 'turkey farm,' a source of patronage jobs.
As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's 'upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management"
Advance Men in Charge
via New York Times: "It's not really all that surprising that the officials who run FEMA are stressing that all-important emergency response function: the public relations campaign. As it turns out, that's all they really have experience at doing.
Michael Brown was made the director after he was asked to resign from the International Arabian Horse Association, and the other top officials at FEMA don't exactly have impressive résumés in emergency management either. The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.
Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience - and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy. Mr. Morris was a press handler with the Bush presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush campaign commercials.
* * *
Surely there are loyal Republicans among the 50 directors of state emergency services. But President Bush chose to make FEMA a dumping ground for unqualified cronies - a sure sign that he wanted to hasten the degradation of an agency that conservative Republicans have long considered an evil of big government. Katrina has proved that federal disaster help is vital, and that Mr. Brown and his team of advance men can't do the job. What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about disaster relief."
Michael Brown was made the director after he was asked to resign from the International Arabian Horse Association, and the other top officials at FEMA don't exactly have impressive résumés in emergency management either. The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.
Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience - and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy. Mr. Morris was a press handler with the Bush presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush campaign commercials.
* * *
Surely there are loyal Republicans among the 50 directors of state emergency services. But President Bush chose to make FEMA a dumping ground for unqualified cronies - a sure sign that he wanted to hasten the degradation of an agency that conservative Republicans have long considered an evil of big government. Katrina has proved that federal disaster help is vital, and that Mr. Brown and his team of advance men can't do the job. What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about disaster relief."
A Legal System in Shambles
via New York Times: "Along with the destruction of homes, neighborhoods and lives, Hurricane Katrina decimated the legal system of the New Orleans region.
More than a third of the state's lawyers have lost their offices, some for good. Most computer records will be saved. Many other records will be lost forever. Some local courthouses have been flooded, imperiling a vast universe of files, records and documents. Court proceedings from divorces to murder trials, to corporate litigation, to custody cases will be indefinitely halted and when proceedings resume lawyers will face prodigious - if not insurmountable - obstacles in finding witnesses and principals and in recovering evidence.
It is an implosion of the legal network not seen since disasters like the Chicago fire of 1871 or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, events in times so much simpler as to be useless in making much sense of this one.
* * *
'New things come up every day. I think this storm is going to produce more legal issues and complications than anyone has ever imagined.'"
More than a third of the state's lawyers have lost their offices, some for good. Most computer records will be saved. Many other records will be lost forever. Some local courthouses have been flooded, imperiling a vast universe of files, records and documents. Court proceedings from divorces to murder trials, to corporate litigation, to custody cases will be indefinitely halted and when proceedings resume lawyers will face prodigious - if not insurmountable - obstacles in finding witnesses and principals and in recovering evidence.
It is an implosion of the legal network not seen since disasters like the Chicago fire of 1871 or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, events in times so much simpler as to be useless in making much sense of this one.
* * *
'New things come up every day. I think this storm is going to produce more legal issues and complications than anyone has ever imagined.'"
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Kick procrastination: Run a dash
via 43 Folders: "Procrastination can drive most of us into a spiral of shame that’s as mundane as it is painfully personal. We know what we should be doing, but some invisible hang-up keeps us on the line. Unfortunately, the guaranteed consequence of procrastination is growth in the scale of the task you’ve been putting off—as well as the anxiety that it creates. All the time you’re putting something off, your problem’s getting bigger—both in reality and in your head, where your colorful imagination is liable to turn even the most trivial item into an unsolvable juggernaut that threatens to overwhelm you. And that means extra stress, more procrastination, and the music goes round.
My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute. By breaking a few tiny pebbles off of your perceived monolith, you end up psyching yourself out of your stupor, as well as making much-needed progress on your overdue project. Neat, huh?"
My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute. By breaking a few tiny pebbles off of your perceived monolith, you end up psyching yourself out of your stupor, as well as making much-needed progress on your overdue project. Neat, huh?"
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
The post-hurricane speech Bush won't deliver
via SFGate: "My fellow Americans: First, I want to apologize to you, and particularly to the citizens of Mississippi and Louisiana, for my administration's failure to prepare for Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. I apologize for our excruciating slowness in getting life-supporting essentials -- food, clean water and medicine -- to the flood victims in New Orleans. Sadly, I realize that the federal government's inexcusable delay of at least two days in providing these essential items caused many unnecessary deaths, and unnecessarily prolonged the agony for thousands of mostly poor, black citizens of the United States, who were barely surviving in disgusting conditions. For that I am truly sorry."
Screed Against Michael Brown
via The Irish Trojan's blog: "If the braintrust running this country really thought that 'the water would drain away fairly quickly' after a direct hit on New Orleans from a major hurricane, then my God, our country is run by the most absolutely incompetent bunch of nitwits imaginable. The city is below sea level. Once it floods, there is nowhere for the water to 'drain away' to! Everyone knows this!!!"
Flying Solo: A Survival Guide for the Solo and Small Firm Lawyer
via abanet.com: "“This (book) covers the waterfront of issues faced daily by solo practitioners. Even if you have one or more of the earlier editions, you will find fresh ideas and valuable insights for your practice and your life as a solo. It is an essential addition to your library.”James E. Brill, Solo Lawyer, Houston, Texas"
Laying a Foundation to Impeach a Witness at Deposition
South Carolina Trial Law Blog: "Evan Schaeffer recently wrote a post on How to Start a Deposition at his Illinois Trial Practice Weblog. It’s a good post for young lawyers on how to get started. That reminded me of the opening questions that I use to lock a witness down in the event that the witness needs to be impeached at trial:"
Finding Where The Work Is
via abanet.com: "Although these are important sources of work, it is the rare attorney who can count on these sources of work alone to fill out an annual expectation. This means that we have to go find work. Searching for, qualifying, and closing new or additional business is as important to building a successful practice as your numbers this year for annual hours worked, billed and realized. So, how do we do that?"
Practicing Your Passion
via ABA's GP|Solo Magazine - July/August 2005: "If you want to find passion in your law practice but seem to be having difficulty, take some quiet time and make a list of such cultural messages. Although it may be challenging to identify the many “givens” in your life, it is well worth the effort. This exercise will get you ready for a true transformation in your work: Instead of responding reflexively to situations, you can consciously choose to act—or not act. Once you’re able to do that, you will be able to choose your own culture.
The possibilities are, if not endless, much more varied than most lawyers imagine. See the sidebar “Four Success Stories” on page 13 for some examples of how this can be done. Every law practice can be personalized so that the heart, as well as the head, is satisfied and more at peace."
The possibilities are, if not endless, much more varied than most lawyers imagine. See the sidebar “Four Success Stories” on page 13 for some examples of how this can be done. Every law practice can be personalized so that the heart, as well as the head, is satisfied and more at peace."
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